ICASAT 2025
Keynote Speakers
Agustín Rayo PhD
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
📍Pedro Ferriz Santa Cruz Planetarium and Immersion Center, also known as “El Péndulo”
📅 Date: October 1st | 🕑 Time: 11:30-12:30 hrs.
Keynote Lecture:
"The Social Challenges of Artificial Intelligence: A University Perspective"
Abstract:
Artificial intelligence represents an unprecedented technological breakthrough that is profoundly transforming the world we live in. This revolution brings with it significant social, economic, and human challenges. In this context, universities can play a key role in helping us face these challenges. In this talk, I will share some initiatives we are developing at MIT to address these issues.
About the speaker:
He is the current dean of the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (SHASS). His research focuses on the intersection of the philosophy of logic and the philosophy of language. He has worked on the relationship between logic and mathematics and the limits of communicable thought. He is the author of numerous articles and two notable books: The Construction of Logical Space (Oxford University Press, 2013) and On the Brink of Paradox (MIT Press, 2019), the latter of which received the 2020 PROSE Award for Best Textbook in the Humanities. Rayo redesigned course 24.118 Paradox and Infinity, a class that explores topics at the intersection of philosophy and mathematics, taught in person and online. Before assuming his current role as dean of SHASS, he served as associate dean, interim dean, and head of house at one of MIT’s undergraduate dormitories.
David Rolnick PhD
School of Computer Science at McGill University and Mila
Quebec AI Institute
📍Pedro Ferriz Santa Cruz Planetarium and Immersion Center, also known as “El Péndulo”
📅 Date: October 2nd | 🕑 Time: 14:00-15:00 hrs.
Keynote Lecture:
"Tackling Climate Change with AI"
Abstract:
AI is increasingly being used to help tackle climate change, from optimizing electrical grids to emulating climate models and monitoring biodiversity. As such applications grow, however, it is becoming clear that high-powered AI tools often fall short. Methods designed using standard benchmarks may fail to capture the constraints or metrics of specific real-world problems, while a “one size fits all” approach ignores useful auxiliary information in particular applications. In this talk, we show how problem-centered design can lead to AI algorithms that are both methodologically innovative and highly impactful in the fight against climate change. We will also consider ways that AI contributes to climate change and how better to align the use of AI with climate goals.
About the speaker:
David Rolnick is an Assistant Professor and Canada CIFAR AI Chair in the School of Computer Science at McGill University and at Mila – Quebec AI Institute. He is a Co-founder and Chair of Climate Change AI and serves as Scientific Co-director of Sustainability in the Digital Age and co-lead of the Global Center on AI and Biodiversity Change (ABC). Dr. Rolnick is a Sloan Research Fellow and an AI2050 Early Career Fellow and was named to the MIT Technology Review’s 2021 list of “35 Innovators Under 35” for his work in building the field of AI and climate change. He received his Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics from MIT and is a former Fulbright Scholar, NSF Graduate Research Fellow, and NSF Mathematical Sciences Postdoctoral Research Fellow.
Monjur Mourshed PhD
Cardiff University
📍Pedro Ferriz Santa Cruz Planetarium and Immersion Center, also known as “El Péndulo”
📅 Date: October 3rd | 🕑 Time: 16:00-17:00 hrs.
Keynote Lecture:
"AI-driven digital twin for climate resilience: Bridging data science and environmental sustainability"
Abstract:
The convergence of artificial intelligence and digital twin technologies presents unprecedented opportunities for addressing climate change and sustainability challenges. This keynote explores how AI-enhanced digital twins can revolutionise our approach to building decarbonisation, energy system optimisation, and climate change mitigation and adaptation. Drawing from recent advances in machine learning, including deep neural networks, ensemble methods, and hybrid physics-informed models, this presentation will demonstrate how these technologies enable real-time monitoring and maintenance, model-predictive optimal control, and long-horizon planning of energy systems. The presentation will address critical challenges, including data integration across heterogeneous systems, uncertainty quantification, and the development of explainable AI for stakeholder trust. Finally, it will outline a roadmap for scaling these solutions, especially in contexts where detailed data for modelling is not readily available, emphasising the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration between data scientists, engineers, and policymakers for enhanced sustainability.
About the speaker:
Dr. Monjur Mourshed is the Dean of Environmental Sustainability at Cardiff University and Professor of Sustainable Engineering. He leads the integration of climate action and sustainability across the university’s research, education, operations, and civic engagement, coordinating the Sustainable Futures plan and the institutional goal of achieving net-zero emissions and becoming a nature-positive institution.
With a multidisciplinary background in architecture, engineering, and data science, his expertise includes net-zero energy systems, carbon accounting, AI-driven energy forecasting, 2050 pathway modelling, and the use of digital twins to optimize the energy and environmental performance of buildings and cities. He has led major strategic projects such as Wales 2050 and Bangladesh 2050, the latter being the first of its kind in a developing country.
His research has been funded by organizations including UKRI, the European Commission, Innovate UK, and the governments of the United Kingdom and Wales, among others.
Patricia Hernández Reséndiz PhD
Astrofísicos en Acción
📍Pedro Ferriz Santa Cruz Planetarium and Immersion Center, also known as “El Péndulo”
📅 Date: October 1st | 🕑 Time: 14:00-15:00 hrs.
Keynote Lecture:
"Experimental Astrophysics"
Abstract:
For many people, astrophysicists can be observational or theoretical, or they can do instrumentation, but these are not the only paths through which research in astrophysics can be conducted. Experimentation is essential to the work in this area of knowledge, as it helps constrain the mathematical models that attempt to explain the cosmos and more accurately characterize celestial bodies. In the talk, we will examine two examples on which I based my astronomical research.
About the speaker:
She holds a degree in Physics from the Faculty of Sciences at UNAM and a Ph.D. in Astrophysics from the same institution. In 2015, UNAM’s Graduate Program in Astrophysics awarded her the Alfonso Caso Medal. She is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León in Monterrey. Her research focuses on asteroid polarization and the formation of the Solar System. She also teaches Astrobiology. Since 2009, she has worked as a science communicator, workshop facilitator, speaker, entrepreneur, and YouTube content creator. She co-founded Astrofísicos en Acción, the first public, multiplatform science communication company dedicated to bringing astronomy to all of Latin America in an original, fun, and accessible way. Committed to equity in science, she advocates for greater participation of women in STEM fields and shares a deep passion for the arts.
Priscilla Baltezar
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
📍Pedro Ferriz Santa Cruz Planetarium and Immersion Center, also known as “El Péndulo”
📅 Date: October 1st | 🕑 Time: 10:00-11:00 hrs.
Keynote Lecture:
"Leveraging Systems Engineering thinking to Promote Justice with Space Enabled Technology"
Abstract:
Our mission at the Space Enabled Research Group Laboratory, located at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is to promote social and environmental justice across our planet's ecosystems by leveraging technologies enabled by space. As a research analyst in the laboratory, my goal is to leverage my expertise as a remote sensing and environmental scientist to understand the development of changing environments in collaboration with our partners who seek to reach their Sustainable Development Goals as members of the United Nations. The work we do in our laboratory is highly diverse, covering a broad range of topics that address issues like forest loss and degradation, machine learning on the cloud, sustainability in space, or even the creation of eco-friendly jet fuel using beeswax. All of our work is founded on the principles of creating a sustainable environment through the lens of Systems Architecture Engineering, the Environment-Vulnerability-Decision-Making-Technology Framework, a method designed by our principal investigator and professor, Dr. Danielle Wood, Ph.D.
About the speaker:
Priscilla Baltezar is a researcher at MIT’s Space Enabled Research Group, where she applies space technologies, remote sensing, and geographic information systems (GIS) to address challenges related to climate change, coastal resilience, and environmental justice. She has worked with institutions such as NASA, the University of California Los Angeles, the University of Maryland, and Clark University, leading projects across Africa, Asia, and the Americas. Her research combines geospatial analysis, machine learning, and fieldwork to map vulnerable ecosystems and support evidence-based decision-making. In addition, she actively promotes inclusion in STEM, especially among Indigenous women and underrepresented communities.
Sai Ravela PhD
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
📍Pedro Ferriz Santa Cruz Planetarium and Immersion Center, also known as “El Péndulo”
📅 Date: October 3th | 🕑 Time: 9:00-10:00 hrs.
Keynote Lecture:
"Smart, Sparse, Scalable: Co-Active Intelligence for Climate Extremes and Sustainability"
Abstract:
Co-optimizing adaptation and mitigation for sustainability is fundamentally a problem of decision-making under non-stationary uncertainty. Extreme, episodic events—such as cyclones, heatwaves, and floods—or the sudden emergence of tipping points can disrupt carefully prepared strategies assuming a gradual mean climate state drift. Quantifying extreme risk demands resolving fine-scale dynamics and statistical tails, a challenge for both modeling and observation. Climate models fail for rare, high-impact events, while dense environmental monitoring, such as routine soil moisture, is challenging.
In the first part of this talk, I will introduce a strategy for generating and resolving extreme weather events such as cyclones. I propose a novel stochastic process for coherent fluids to create large catalogs of synthetic extreme events, integrating statistics, physics, and foundation models to generate high-resolution fields. This hybrid AI-physics model co-actively maps coarse climate models to fine-scale observations, assures physical consistency, overcomes data scarcity prevalent at extremes, and is applicable to future climate scenarios.
In the second part, I will address the model complexity challenge in hybrid AI-physics systems, where over-parameterization is common, limiting generalizability and interpretability. I will introduce an approach based on stochastic learning dynamics, in which an ensemble approximation to the Fokker-Planck equation tractably enables the co-active optimization of neural structure and function.
Finally, I will generalize the Co-Active Systems framework, demonstrating how feedback between models, data, theory, and experts enables parsimony for efficient knowledge acquisition and resilient representations. Arguing that parsimony is fundamental to both modeling and observation, I will, time permitting, discuss emerging opportunities in quantum computation for parsimony as a transformative future direction.
About the speaker:
He is a Principal Research Scientist in MIT’s Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences Department and directs the Earth Signals and Systems Group (ESSG). He pioneers a co-active systems theory that exploits feedback between theory, data, models, and experts through uncertainty, information, and parsimony for stochastic, high-dimensional earth, planet, climate, and life processes. He applies these methods to climate risk and sustainability, co-active observing systems, the physics of learning, statistical inference for coherent signals, fluid imaging, and image recognition for conservation. He received MIT’s 2016 Infinite Kilometer Award for pioneering work on statistical approaches to coherent fluids and co-founded Windrisktech LLC, the first company to model cyclone-induced future climate risks. He has advised numerous students, authored many papers, and teaches the popular Dynamics, Optimization, and Learning Systems class. Dr. Ravela holds a PhD in Computer Science (Computer Vision & Robotics) from UMass Amherst (2003) and trained at MIT as a postdoctoral researcher in Stochastic Processes and Geophysical Fluid Dynamics (2004), where he remains.
Sajjad Keshtkar PhD
Tokyo Metropolitan University
📍Pedro Ferriz Santa Cruz Planetarium and Immersion Center, also known as “El Péndulo”
📅 Date: October 2nd | 🕑 Time: 16:00-17:00 hrs.
Keynote Lecture:
"Towards a Sustainable Space Environment: Approaches to Space
Debris Mitigation"
Abstract:
As the number of satellites and space missions increases, so does the accumulation of orbital debris, posing serious threats to both current and future space operations. This presentation outlines key strategies and recent developments in space debris mitigation, with a focus on mechatronic and robotic approaches. Topics include active debris removal, in-orbit servicing, and mitigation strategies. By highlighting practical examples and ongoing research, the talk aims to explore pathways toward more sustainable practices in space operations, contributing to long-term orbital safety and responsible exploration.
About the speaker:
Dr. Sajjad Keshtkar is an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of System Design, Tokyo Metropolitan University. He earned his bachelor's and master's degrees in Aerospace Engineering from the National Aerospace University (KHAI), Ukraine, and completed his Ph.D. in Control Engineering at CINVESTAV, Mexico, in 2016.
His current research interests include attitude control systems for small satellites, space robotics, and mechatronic mechanisms for spacecraft and UAVs.
Sara Gallegos
POLYMATH OF TOMORROW 360
📍Pedro Ferriz Santa Cruz Planetarium and Immersion Center, also known as “El Péndulo”
📅 Date: October 2nd | 🕑 Time: 13:00-14:00 hrs.
Keynote Lecture:
"From a Pencil to the Cosmos: How Graphene Is Revolutionizing Space Exploration"
Abstract:
This talk explores how a material that can even be found at the tip of a pencil —graphene— is transforming the way we explore space. Through real examples, recent discoveries, and ongoing projects, we’ll see how this incredibly light, strong, and versatile material is being used in nearly every part of a space mission. The goal is to share, in a simple and engaging way, how materials science is helping us imagine, design, and build the space missions of the future.
About the speaker:
She holds a Bachelor's Degree in Physics from Mexico and is pursuing a Master's Degree in Science Studies in Denmark, specializing in Science Communication and Astronomy. Her interests include astronomy, green energy, sustainable research, science communication, and gender studies. She has worked as a guide at the Science Museum in her hometown and actively communicates science through social media, part of a personal project that has reached over 130,000 followers. Additionally, she has experience in front desk roles and has served as a mentor at both her undergraduate and current universities. Her background includes research experience and active participation in national academic congresses, where she has presented her work. She also authored two published articles and collaborates with the United Nations (UN) and Movimiento STEM.
Rodrigo Ortega Toro PhD
University of Cartagena
📍Pedro Ferriz Santa Cruz Planetarium and Immersion Center, also known as “El Péndulo”
📅 Date: October 2nd | 🕑 Time: 9:00-10:00 hrs.
Keynote Lecture:
"Development of various biodegradable materials from agro-industrial resources"
Abstract:
The generation of agro-industrial waste and the environmental impact of conventional plastics have driven the development of biodegradable materials as a sustainable alternative. This presentation addresses the use of agro-industrial resources for the formulation of various biodegradable materials, with an emphasis on their potential application in food packaging. It discusses different polymeric matrices derived from starch, cellulose, and proteins, as well as formulations that incorporate active compounds with antioxidant, antimicrobial, and pH-indicating properties. The processing methods considered include traditional techniques such as casting, extrusion, and compression molding, with a particular focus on the use of reactive extrusion to promote in situ structural modifications. The developed materials have been characterized in terms of their physical, chemical, and microbiological properties, showing significant improvements through the use of polymer blends, crosslinking agents, and multilayer structures. Additionally, studies are presented that demonstrate the effect of incorporating by-products and plant extracts, which enhance the functionality of the bioplastics. This approach helps reduce environmental impact, comply with emerging regulations, and add value to agricultural and fishery waste, establishing a comprehensive strategy for a circular economy in the biodegradable packaging sector.
About the speaker:
He holds a degree in Agroindustrial Engineering from the University of Cauca and obtained his master’s and doctoral degrees in Food Science, Technology, and Management from the Polytechnic University of Valencia (Spain). He is currently a full-time professor at the University of Cartagena, affiliated with the Food Engineering Program. He is an expert in biomaterials and the utilization of agro-industrial waste for the development of materials and additives with potential applications in various industries, including food, food packaging, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, agriculture, water purification, and biomedicine. Prof. Dr. Ortega is the author of over 130 articles published in indexed journals and has participated in more than 50 scientific conferences. He is also the director of the research group Food Packaging and Shelf Life (FP&SL) and a Senior Researcher recognized by the Ministry of Science, Technology, and Innovation of Colombia.